


Tilting at Windmills

by xadie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Don Quixote - Freeform, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:03:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xadie/pseuds/xadie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariadne fell and lost herself, and everyone decided it would be for the best if she forgot everything and had a normal life. Well, almost everyone…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tilting at Windmills

[A/N] This was originally supposed to be Arthur/Ariadne, but Eames wouldn’t sit down and shut up, then it all got a bit wistful.

_“You are a devil at everything, and there is no kind of thing in the 'versal world but what you can turn your hand into.”_ **Don Quixote**

***

The architecture firm is small, set behind a storefront in a typical American main street. It’s not the kind of place Eames had imagined. Her vision is so sweeping, her mind pliable and quick. He’d expected to find her working with Norman Foster in London, not in some backwater hellhole.

If she’d been in London maybe he would have left her alone. Maybe.

He spots Ariadne as soon as he walks in. It would be hard not to: she’s the only one there. She’s bent over draught paper, sketching the plans for the kind of modest family home that he’d commit suicide rather than live in. Her hair is longer, her clothing more conservative, but her face is just as sweet as ever.

“Hello, love,” he greets her, more softly than he’d intended. She looks up at him, tucking a loose lock of shining brown hair behind one tiny ear. 

“Hi…” she begins warmly, playing the saleswoman, then falters, mild confusion marking her features. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, do I know you?” 

“Don’t think so sweetheart,” he lies, allowing a smirk to twist the corner of his mouth. Yusuf isn’t as good as he thinks he is. “This Harper Brown?”

“Yes.” Her eyes wander to the artful curlicues of the sign painted on the window. She’s been trained to be polite, though, no matter how dense the potential customer’s question. “What can I do for you?”

“You Harper or Brown?” he answers her question with a question, part of him acknowledging that he can’t wait for her to get frustrated with him. He’s missed her spitfire tendencies.

“Oh, excuse me, I’m Jenna Wallace.” She stands and extends her hand, the creases gathered in the front of her pencil skirt dropping into a web of indifferent lines. He takes her hand, noticing its smallness in his own.

“Eames.” 

She smiles at him, her brown eyes warm. Looking into them, he’s actually offended that he’s the one in this poky shop instead of Arthur. He’d always known the man was 90% librarian, but he’d never assumed Arthur was an idiot, before all this happened. 

Seeming a little flustered by his gaze, she pulls her hand away gently and gestures to an old-fashioned bentwood chair behind him. “Won’t you take a seat, Mr Eames?” 

He flops into it, the wood creaking a protest beneath him, and grins at her. “Just Eames, love, everyone calls me that.”

“Oh, OK.” She sits down on her side of the desk. His well-trained ears pick up the whisper of elastic against nylon as she crosses her legs. A garter belt. Not quite such a small-town girl as she’s making herself out to be. “Did you have a project you’d like to talk about?” He smiles at her more widely.

“That’s right.” He invents quickly. “Big deal, very hush hush. You look like just the girl to help me out with it.” 

She leans forward, blouse tightening where it’s tucked into her skirt, gesturing towards the closed door behind her. “Oh, would you like to speak to one of the partners? I’m only an assistant.”

“Nah, pet. Didn’t get where I am by missing talent when I see it.” He doesn’t leer at her like he’s tempted to, careful to remember that she doesn’t know him yet. He taps her sketches with one blunt finger. “I like what you’re doing there.” He doesn’t. “I want you to come out and look at a site with me. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

She seems a little worried, but nods her agreement. 

“Good,” he roars, surprising her as he leaps out of his seat, suddenly full of energy. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.” He taps the side of his nose, a conspiratorial gesture. “Tell the partners you’ve got a big fish on the line. A very big fish. But don’t say anything else.” As the shop door closes, he thinks he hears a quiet ‘but I don’t know anything else’ from behind him, and barks a laugh. Ariadne’s still in there somewhere.

***

He’s pacing the floor of his dull but scrupulously clean motel room later that night, debating whether to throw himself on the mercy of some desperate suburban housewife in some miserable small town bar, weighing up potentially complicating his situation versus his nagging boredom, when his phone buzzes. 

“How did you get this number?” he chortles as he answers. An exhausted sigh greets him from the other end, and Eames actually wriggles with pleasure. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Arthur sounds so pissed off, Eames is genuinely delighted with himself. 

“Don’t fret, poppet, I’m just bringing our girl back home.” He bounces on the balls of his feet, waiting for the deluge of anger. 

“We discussed this.” Instead Arthur’s tone is flat, dangerous. 

“You discussed this. I politely ignored your suggestions and decided it was best for all concerned if we got our architect back.” Eames pauses, expecting a bollocking, then speaks more honestly into the silence, “You should see this place, darling, it’s killing her.” He thinks maybe they’ve been cut off, even shakes the phone before pressing it back to his ear. 

“I’m coming to take you away from her. She deserves a normal life.” Eames watches his lips curl into a smirk in the mirror over the dresser.

“You’ll have to find us first.” He throws himself backwards on to the bed, the springs pushing him back up into the air before he settles back into the pillows with a dull thud.

“If you’ve found her, that shouldn’t be too difficult.” Arthur snipes back at him. 

“In fact,” Eames continues as though Arthur hadn’t spoken, “I’m taking her out tonight. Going to show her a proper good time.”

A growl from the other end of the line, and Eames licks his lips in anticipation. Arthur grits, “don’t you dare take advantage of her.”

“Unless you persuade me to stand her up.” His fingers are already flicking open the button of his flies in anticipation. He can picture Arthur going very still in whatever hotel room he’s currently inhabiting. “Come on, darling, talk to me,” Eames wheedles, and knows he’s won when he hears another heavy sigh drifting over the phone line. He imagines Arthur’s forehead, pressed against the glass of a floor-length window, creased in frustration, a maelstrom of desire and his need to protect Ariadne from Eames’ attentions warring with his promise that this would never happen again.

“God, you’ve got your hands down your pants already, haven’t you?” It’s a rhetorical question. Arthur knows Eames all too well. “You horrify me, you know that?’ The catch in his voice belies the honesty of that claim.

“If that were true, you’d have hung up on me long before now, lover” Eames teases, voice deep. He wraps his hand around himself and purrs, “you wouldn’t be pushing me away if you were here, either.”

“I suppose we’ll see when I get there,” Arthur snits. Eames hears the distinctive sound of sheets rustling down the phone line. He’s glad Arthur’s getting comfortable; nothing less than hearing Arthur break apart, his name on his lips, will satisfy Eames when he’s in this mood.

“There’s the sweetest little dresser in this room, darling. It’s got a mirror up above it. I’d love to watch your face as I fuck you from behind, your hands gripping that cheap veneer like your life depended on it.”

“Christ…” Eames savours Arthur’s soft oath like so much fine wine. He’s so _easy_ , much as he’d like to believe he stands aloof from anything as sordid as phone sex.

Eames relaxes further into his pillows and talks, letting nature take its course.

***

“Et voila!” Eames announces with a wide sweep of his arms.

“What am I looking at?” she asks, staring around the site he scouted in the pale dawn of this morning. He’s sorry she’s wearing rubber boots; he’d have loved to watch her struggle in heels up the rocky path to this place. But then Ariadne was always surprisingly practical, despite her capacity for wild invention.

They’re standing in a broad clearing, pine trees framing scrubland. The valley rolls out below them, a patchwork of stone and grass, leading the eye on to grey and imposing mountains in the distance. 

“Heard of Augusta? Monterey? Oakmont?” He’s channelling Donald Trump this morning. If they were dreaming he’d look like him, too. “Nor had anyone else, until the golf courses came along.”

She looks at him in astonishment. “You want to put a golf course _here_?”

“Not just any golf course, love, the best golf course in the world.” He wriggles his bottom, pretends to line up a shot. She giggles and he thinks the old sparkle is back in her eyes. “Can’t you see it? Tiger Woods playing through right where you’re standing.” He takes his shot, shades his eyes to watch his imaginary ball flying over the imaginary green. His face falls. “Oh well, landed in the rough.” He’s mostly saying it to make her laugh again, which she does. 

“I don’t know anything about designing golf courses,” she smiles.

“Not to worry, sweetheart, we’ll get one of the pros to do that, maybe Colin Montgomery.” He drapes a casual arm around her shoulders, turns her to look back up the hill. “You’ll be designing the clubhouse. Best that money can buy, state-of-the-art.” He waves a hand across the hillside, and can almost hear the gears turning in her head.

“Nothing old-fashioned,” she murmurs, more to herself than to him. “Something cutting edge, but with the sensibility of Frank Lloyd Wright to anchor it. Glass everywhere, to take advantage of this view…” she claps her hands together in front of her chest, a delighted smile lighting up her features. She looks up at him and he has to drop his arm quickly and step away to stop himself doing something impulsive and stupid like kissing her.

Instead he turns, arms open and laughs. “The world’s most beautiful golf course, love, and it’s all ours to create.”

“I have to get back to the office,” she says, spinning on her heel and marching back towards the trees. “I can’t wait to get started.”

“’Fraid not, pet,” he rumbles, falling into step beside her. “I don’t want anyone else catching wind of this.” She looks up at him in confusion. “That’s why I picked you: the minute I saw you I knew I could trust you. I don’t know your partners and I don’t want to.” He could see her slipping away, worrying her bottom lip, so he talks practicalities, as though the deal is already done. “I’ll second you on retainer, they’ll get paid and you’ll be free to work on my project.”

“OK,” she agrees slowly. “We can work on it at my place, I’ve got room.” 

“Great. I’ll drop by later.” He drives her back to town, where he leaves her to start cutting the fine threads that have begun to bind her to this place. 

***

It’s pissing down with rain when he drives up to the address she gave him. The darkening afternoon is so strongly reminiscent of Yusuf’s dream on the Fischer job that he has to feel the edges of his poker chip, the familiar nicked roughness proving to him that he’s awake. 

“Fucking great,” he curses as he finds himself pulling up outside a broken-down factory miles outside of town. His engine’s been making funny noises for the last fifteen minutes, too, and he’s half convinced that he’ll find himself slashed up like a sorority girl, hacked to bits in the woods while some maniac runs off with his head for a trophy.

Just as he’s about to turn the car around and make a break for it, a square of white light pours out and he sees Ariadne framed in the doorway. With a sigh of relief, he jumps out of the car and runs to her through the sheeting water, getting soaked in the process. 

“Come in. God, you’re wet through,” she exclaims, letting him into a chilly industrial-style kitchen that does nothing to abate his shivers. 

“Yeah, it’s bizarre.” He rubs his arms reflexively; water sopping out of his sleeves on to the tiled floor. “It was nice this morning.” 

She shrugs one shoulder and he notices her casual clothes, especially the neckerchief, for the first time. It’s almost like being in Paris again. “Four seasons in one day around here. That’s what they say. Wait and I’ll bring you a towel.” She disappears up a metal staircase at the back of the kitchen, the lights flicking on above in what looks like the former manager’s office. He can’t see in, though; there are curtains drawn across every window. 

“How long have you lived here?” he asks, and cringes inwardly at how banal the question sounds. This is what people do, he reminds himself. They talk about the weather and their homes. He’s never had much time for what generally passes for small talk. But if he’s trying to get her to remember, he needs to ask these kinds of things. 

“Here in the factory, or here in town?” she asks, nimbly navigating the stairs with a bundle of towels and what looks mercifully like dry clothing. 

“Both. Either.” She sets the pile down on the stainless steel worktop and instantly busies herself filling a pan with water. He imagines that he makes her nervous and the thought gives him a tiny thrill as he towels off.

“A few months is the answer to both, I guess.” She pulls proper teabags out of the cupboard, and it’s almost like she’s been waiting for him to visit. It tugs at him, how much he’s missed having her around, and he swallows thickly. 

“And who’s are these?” he asks, holding up a pair of oversized sweatpants. She’d drown in them if she had to wear them. She blushes as though he’s asked about her sex life, which, given time and maybe a couple of tequilas, he definitely would.

“They were here when I moved in, must have belonged to the factory owner.” She gestures vaguely with a teaspoon, before loading three sugars into his cup and pouring in milk. He wonders if she realises that she hasn’t asked him how he takes it. “I thought they might come in handy at some point and, well, here you are.” She sets his cup down then turns away, flustered, as he comfortably strips off his slacks in front of her. 

“Here I am,” he agrees, and stifles a laugh at her naivety. Surely in all those months they worked together, surely at least once she and Arthur actually got down to it. He shakes his head over the two of them. He knows he always has to be the one to initiate sex with Arthur, but he’s always just assumed it’s because of the weird, mindfucking nature of their relationship. It’s never occurred to him that maybe Arthur just doesn’t know _how_. And yet here she is, blushing like a virgin, and if somebody turned to him this second and offered him a million dollar bet that she was one, he’d take it.

“Um, so I’ve started sketching,” she offers between sips of her tea. She takes hers black, no sugar, and he can imagine the tannins cloying her tongue, hot and dry. When she finally turns, seeing that he’s slipped into a baggy t-shirt and tied the sweatpants snugly around himself, making them balloon ridiculously from his hips, she quirks a smile and leads him through double metal doors into the vast space beyond. 

He catches his breath when he sees it. The factory is almost the double of the warehouse they used in Paris, right down to the cracked concrete floor under his bare feet and the flaking white paint on the walls. In the very centre of the room she’s set up her workstation, models and sketchbooks strewn around. On a corner of one of the desks, a glimmer of gold catches his eye. Her totem, a bronze chess piece, left sitting in plain view where anyone could grab it. He feels sick at the thought and fingers his poker chip, having moved it safely into the pocket of the sweatpants. 

“They’re rough, at the moment, and it’ll take me a while to really get there, but I already feel like it’s taking shape,” she says, motioning to a heavy wooden screen that’s festooned with sketches. Some of them have even been coloured with pencil, the soft hues bringing out the inherent loveliness of her designs. He recovers himself and peruses them slowly, aware of her nervous shuffling beside him. 

“This is wonderful, sweetheart, I think we’re on the same page.” He turns to see her relieved smile. “There’s obviously still a long way to go, but you’re definitely on the right track.” Her face falls a little at that, but he knows he has to keep her working with him for as long as it takes her to get her memory back, and if that means rejecting her designs, even upsetting her, he’ll do it.

“OK good, well, I’d welcome your suggestions,” she says, and he’s always found her particularly adorable in professional mode.

“Time to celebrate, I think,” he announces, clapping his hands together, the sound echoing around the empty factory. “There’s a bottle of wine in my car, I’ll fetch it.” He would have brought champagne, but she doesn’t like it, so he’s brought a rich red, the best he could find here in hicksville. If she had any idea of the things he knows about her, she’d run away screaming.

She slips past him, waving him back. “I’ll get it, you stay dry.” 

He hears the click of an umbrella in the kitchen, and shouts to her: “There’s a basket in the back seat. Bring that as well.” 

He slurps down the remainder of his perfectly-made cup of tea, setting the mug down on her desk. Turning back to the board, he ignores the clubhouse drawings and instead turns his attention to the sheets lining the margins, where fantastical skyscrapers vie for space with bridges spanning into nothingness. Here there’s the vaguely familiar interior of a hotel lobby, vast stretches of glass and grey marble stairs. And here’s… Eames pauses, mouth open. Here’s a lovingly-rendered drawing of Arthur, eyes closed in sleep. His head is turned towards the artist, his face boyish as it always is when he’s forced to relax. Long fingers grip the arms of a cane sun-lounger, crisp white cuffs contrasting with the worn surface of the chair. The pencil lines are so soft, it’s like seeing him through a fine mist.

“Ah, I don’t usually draw people, so it’s not very good,” she announces from beside him, making him jump. 

“Who is he?” Eames asks cautiously, taking the proffered bottle of wine. She looks immensely sad for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she murmurs, then shakes herself and grins up at him. “It’s silly, I was just sitting one day doodling and there he was.”

“Does he have a name?” He wills her to say Arthur, watching her fight for it internally. Her mouth almost forms the word, he can feel it on the tip of her tongue, but then she shakes her head, her eyes clearing. 

“I don’t think he does, but if I had to call that drawing anything I’d call it ‘Dulcinea’, I guess.” 

Oh lord, things are bad, Eames thinks. He wonders which of them she thinks is Don Quixote. He smiles at her to cover his thoughts, and asks, “draw me a windmill.”

She huffs a laugh out in a single breath, obviously pleased to be given a task. Ariadne’s fingers always itch for a pencil. She drops into a 1920s rolling chair and pulls a sketchbook towards her. He wanders off to find wine glasses and a corkscrew, settling for tumblers and a skewer from the single occupied cupboard of her vast kitchen. When he comes back he collapses on to the old, ratty couch that bounds one corner of her working space, passing her a glass and watching as she sips at the wine absentmindedly, the red liquid staining her lips. 

A couple of minutes later, she presents him with a storybook image, a windmill straight out of a fairytale. He half-expects to see Rapunzel letting down her hair from the top window. He smirks at her. 

“Draw one of the ones they have in La Mancha,” he commands, and although her brow wrinkles, she takes the sketchbook back and sets to work. He tops up her glass when she’s finished her wine, content to watch her. It’s been a long time since he’s had the chance. 

Silently he curses Yusuf; if the man hadn’t been experimenting with sedation, and using Ariadne as a guinea pig, their architect wouldn’t be sitting here in Bumfuck, Nowhere while a storm raged outside her sad replica warehouse, unable to remember much more than the simplest truths about her former life. 

“Here you go,” she passes him a far cleaner image, fanciful details expunged. This windmill is squat, discoloured by age, and surrounded by desert as far as they eye can see. In the background there are vague shapes of more windmills, marching over the low hillside like stocky giants. 

“You forgot Don Quixote,” he says, lips twitching, and she laughs a little. Raising her eyebrows, she takes the picture back and sets to work.

“You’re a very demanding boss,” she exclaims, her cheeks flushed from the wine. He fills up her glass while she’s distracted, and sips his own more slowly. 

“You have no idea, pet,” he mumbles, and she giggles at his flirtatious tone, suddenly very young. He’s really going to enjoy waking her up. 

While she draws Don Quixote, he opens the basket and pulls out a blanket, laying it on the floor with a puff of air that ruffles the drawings on her board. He sets out cold chicken and a tub of potato salad, crackers and olives. She’s too engrossed in her work to notice.

“There!” She turns with a flourish to find him sitting on the floor, surrounded by food, and her eyes widen in pleasure. “What’s all this?” 

He can’t tell her he doesn’t want to suffer her cooking, which is always abysmal, so he just grins and takes the sketchbook. “Dinner, love. Reckon you don’t want to get interrupted when you’re working.”

She laughs and joins him on the floor, pulling her ankles under herself and picking a chicken leg to nibble on while he considers her drawing. There’s Don Quixote, astride his horse in his ancient armour, and behind him, indistinct, Sancho Panza on his donkey. There’s something unmistakeably feminine in the shape of the knight errant’s armour, the easy grace of his figure, although his face is turned down. 

“Reminds me of Daumier,” he ventures, and her face lights up. OK, so he’s impersonated an art dealer more than once, but she doesn’t need to know that. 

“Do you think so? I love his caricatures. I saw an exhibition of his once in Paris, it was really inspiring.” Here we go, he thinks, and starts to push.

“You went to Paris?”

“Mmm,” she nodds, mouth full of food. When she swallows, he watches her throat. “I studied there for a year after college, it was wonderful.”

“Really?” He quirks an eyebrow at her. “How does a girl with a Paris education end up drafting houses for hicks in a nowhere town like this? No offence, love.”

She chokes slightly, but recovers with a smile. “None taken.” He tuts internally – he’d hoped that one might hit home a little. “I was… sick for a while when I got back from Paris. My Uncle Dom found me a job here, said the quiet would do me good.” 

Eames nearly laughs out loud at that one. Dear old ‘Uncle’ Dom, of course he’d have a hand in this dirty business. Tucking Ariadne away like he did with all of his problems. Now he was rid of Mal, he wondered whether Ariadne had started popping up in his dreams instead.

“Doesn’t it kill you, being stuck here?” he asks, waving a chicken wing at her lonely skyscrapers and bridges to nowhere. “You should be redesigning cities, not remodelling kitchens.” She blushes, bowing her head over a forkful of potato salad to hide it. 

“It’s safe,” she mutters, then seems to realise how odd that sounds. He assumes she’s had that idea drummed into her head, first by Yusuf, then by Cobb. Their Ariadne, creator and destroyer of worlds, seeking nothing more than to be safe. The thought twists his stomach, and he drops his food, surprising her. 

“And him?” He points at the slumbering Arthur, the marks on the paper so light that from this distance he’s almost invisible. “Don’t you want to go looking for him?” Unexpected tears flood her eyes and she scrubs a hand over them.

“He doesn’t exist; he’s a figment of my imagination,” she answers roughly. Eames swallows the urge to tell her she’s wrong, to fetch his phone and dial Arthur’s number, conveniently stored in his contacts under ‘Darling’. She’d think he was crazy and never speak to him again, go back to her boring life in this boring down and mark him down as some psycho that nearly tricked her into thinking more was possible.

“Dreams do come true, pet,” he rumbles, and she looks away.

“I don’t dream,” she replies, and his heart cracks a little. She yawns, and he takes it as his cue to go. 

“I’ll come over tomorrow, ‘bout the same time?” It’s not really a question, but she nods anyway, helps him to pack up and shows him to the door. The rain has just about stopped, for which he’s immensely grateful. They stand awkwardly in the doorway for a moment, until, on impulse, he throws his free arm around her and kisses the crown of her head. She smells different, but still like herself. Changed her shampoo, he supposes. He indulges himself by quickly cradling the back of her head, stroking her neck, then forces himself away from her and out to the car.

She stands in the doorway until he rounds the bend and can’t see her in his mirror anymore. 

***

He likes to surprise her on their evenings together, producing cartons of Chinese food from the next town over (an hour-long round trip that he wouldn’t bother making for anyone else), or a whole smoked salmon from the farmers’ market. Her joy each time he opens the basket is thanks enough. 

He would, if he could, take her out to a bar, get her shitfaced on tequila and dance the night away to whatever passes for music on the jukebox, but he is adamant that he doesn’t want her to make any more memories outside these walls, outside of him and her old life.

And there’s always the wine, up to two bottles between them now, her eyes unfocused and her lips crimson as she laughs at him and nudges him with hip or hand. He wants to walk her backward on to the elderly couch, slide between her legs and lick a path down her smooth, pale skin in the midst of the dust that their movements would force from the old fabric. In these moods he’s half-convinced her memory would come back if he could just make her come hard enough. Even if that’s not true, it wouldn’t exactly be a chore to try out that method, over and over again if he had to. 

She feels it too, he knows that, knows it would be the simplest thing in the world to take advantage of her drunkenness and her memory-loss, to lean over and give her exactly what they both want. He resists, although it isn’t in his nature to do so. Whether it’s for Arthur or for her he isn’t sure. And when she slumps against him, playing with the unravelling fibres of their blanket, her head on his shoulder, he’s hit by an odd wave of protectiveness, wanting nothing more than to keep her safe. He supposes this is what Cobb and Arthur feel about her all the time, and it’s awful, and alien, and it’s whispering to him to keep her here, in this dull, meaningless town, to clip her wings and stop her from flying too close to the sun. 

“People dream about flying,” she slurs, as though she can hear his thoughts.

“What’s that, love?” He brushes her hair back from her forehead, kisses the wake of his touch. She snuggles into him. 

“If I could dream,” she says, raising her eyes to his, “I’d dream about building.”

“Me too, pet.” He looks away from her so he won’t keep staring at her lips, and eventually she simply falls asleep on his shoulder. He lays her on the couch, her body feather-light in his arms, and covers her with the blanket. He drives back to his motel, although he’s really far too drunk to do so. 

He stays away for three days, escaping to a resort on the shores of a nearby lake, its cabins semi-shuttered against the coming winter. He whores it up with the best of them, but when the hangover wears off he finds he needs to see her again. He’s tired, and angry, and all he wants is for her to wake up so they can go back to the way things were. He aches for Arthur, and when he checks his phone he realises that in his drunken haze he called his point man a dozen times. None of the calls were answered. Arthur must have changed his number again.

***

When he enters her kitchen, the formality of knocking dropped after the second day, she’s back in her business clothes, hair pulled up in a knot at the back of her head. Her shoes are off, one stockinged foot rubbing the top of the other as she stands staring out of the cracked window at the pine trees beyond. When she sees him she lights up, erasing the dark circles under her eyes, then retreats a little inside herself, like she knows she’s being too obvious. 

He smirks at her. “Miss me?” 

She giggles. “Oh, were you gone?” She makes a little moue of disappointment over his empty hands, probably hoping for wine and picnics, then shrugs it off and fills a pan with water. 

“What’s all this?” he gestures up and down her outfit. She looks down at herself as though she’s forgotten what she’s wearing. 

“Oh, I went to check in at the office. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them anything,” she rushes to reassure him, reaching up for the teabags. 

Suddenly he’s behind her, taking them from her outstretched fingers and putting them down on the counter. She’s full length against him and instantly shivering, the upper curve of her arse nudging him in a way that isn’t at all unpleasant. 

“Doesn’t suit you,” he murmurs in her ear, pulling the pins out of her hair until it tumbles down her back in softly-scented waves. His fingers trace the column of her throat and she sighs, leaning back against him, tipping her head to give him more access. His hands settle at her waist, measuring its tiny span.

“Eames!” A sharp voice halts him just as he’s bending to bury his nose in the place where her shoulder meets her neck. Eames jerks upright to see Arthur, gaze shuttered, body practically vibrating with repressed rage, silhouetted in the kitchen doorway. Ariadne has her head down, frozen.

“Darling,” Eames laughs easily, as though bumping into an old friend on the street. 

“Let her go. We’re leaving,” Arthur declares, jaw tight. 

With infinite slowness, Ariadne shifts in his arms, looking up at Arthur with wide, tear-filled eyes. 

“Arthur,” she mutters brokenly, and Arthur’s gaze gets even darker, if such a thing were possible. 

“We need to go NOW!” he insists, staring at Eames so that he won’t have to look at her.

“You didn’t come for me,” she whispers. Arthur’s eyes finally flick to her, looking as though he’s been slapped.

“You went too deep… you were gone,” he responds, as though that’s a reasonable explanation.

“You didn’t come.” The words sound like they’re cutting her on the way out of her mouth. Ariadne turns in Eames’ arms, wraps her own around his neck. “You did,” she says, and presses her lips against his, hungry and angry. Her mouth tastes of tears and cheap lipgloss, and although this isn’t the kiss he’d wanted, he can’t stop himself pulling her close, if this is going to be the only time he’ll get to touch her. His hands find her ribcage, stretched as she stands on her tiptoes to reach him, and she bites at his lip with tiny, sharp teeth. Beside them, Arthur is a black cloud of pain and misery, and Eames pulls away from her, unable to bear it anymore.

“Look in there,” he grits, his breath and hers ragged, jerking his head into the factory. He hears rather than sees Arthur go, leaning his forehead against Ariadne’s, staring into her wide, brown eyes. His thumbs rub up and down her sides, a comforting gesture that’s more for his benefit than hers.

“You have to forgive him. Immediately.” She catches her lip between her teeth and hesitates. He watches her fight herself, her rage and disappointment struggling against one simple fact: he’s Arthur, and she’s Ariadne. She never lost him, even when her mind was wiped. He never forgot her, and the guilt ate him up inside every day they’d been apart.

Finally she nods, setting aside her anger and tearing herself away from Eames. “Arthur!” she almost screams as she runs to him, where he stands, unmoving, in the midst of her facsimile Parisian warehouse, his fingers stretching towards her totem. In a blur of long brown hair and well-pressed suit, she wraps herself around him, sobbing. Later, there will be recriminations and arguments, pain and accusations. For now there is nothing but relief.

Arthur unfreezes slowly and reaches for her face, half smiling, cupping the curves of her cheeks. “Quick, give me a kiss,” he says, and meets her trembling lips with his. ‘Finally,’ Eames thinks, and goes to wait in the car.

***

Eames steps back for a while, from both Arthur and Ariadne. The three of them find a warehouse in Milan, and things start to get back to normal. Yusuf rejoins them, forgiven at Ariadne’s insistence, and Saito funnels work their way. A Japanese kid called Tadashi shows up with a suitcase full of manga and a head full of thievery, and slots right in as though he’s always been a part of the team.

Eames knows exactly when Arthur takes her virginity, her step becoming surer, the look in her eyes like she’s just discovered some glorious secret. Eames knows that Arthur will treasure it like the gift it is, will pay it the proper respect in a way Eames would never be able to. 

It’s a long while before Arthur looks at Eames the way he used to, the tension in his eyes begging blackly for release. But when a job goes wrong, and Ariadne nearly falls again, that look is back tenfold and Eames never really could bring himself to let Arthur down.

After that, he figures it’s open season.

When she opens the door to her cosy apartment in Brera and he’s there with a far superior bottle of wine to those available in her little town, and a basket packed with ciabatta and salami, she doesn’t look at all surprised, just grins her quirky little grin at him and invites him in. 

***

Her urgency amazes him. He’d expected reticence and shyness, the remains of the innocence she’d given to Arthur insinuating itself around her limbs and holding her back. Instead she’s certain and bold, hot and sweet like honey melting on a summer’s day. They whisper filthy commands in each other’s ears and she begs him to be rougher, harder, to leave bruises she’ll wear with pride. He thinks he could become addicted to her nails scoring furrows in his back, to her teeth tracing his tattoos, to the sound she makes as she comes, growling and astonished.

In the pre-dawn she dresses while he dozes, and later they sip coffee companionably on her little balcony, watching the early morning Italians going about their business. 

“Did you want me when I was Jenna?” she asks, and he snorts.

“I only ever wanted you to come back,” he says, and she accepts it with a slight nod.

“Jenna was falling in love with you,” she remarks, as though commenting on the bread being delivered to the bakery across the street, and something about that stings. He’s not the man people fall in love with.

“I wasn’t myself,” he says, and stirs more sugar into his coffee. She smiles over at him, bare toes curling around the iron railing, and a whole life they never lived unrolls in front of his eyes – a life lived in a factory on the edge of nowhere, small dreams and small children swirling around their feet, and love in her gaze and her touch. 

“You saved me,” she says quietly, looking away. “I’ll never forget that.”

“He thought he was saving you, too,” Eames states, although he’s loath to invoke Arthur when _this_ isn’t about him. Although, of course, it is.

“I would have died,” she states flatly. “Jenna was so desperate, you have no idea…” she trails off, staring unfocused at the grey-yellow square below. Finally she stirs. “He _will_ kill me eventually, if I let him.” 

She turns and stares at him, and her brown eyes are so sad he wants to reach out and pull her into his lap. Instead he cocks his head without comment, flipping his poker chip over his knuckles. 

“I won’t be another Mal,” she insists with a shake of her head. “I won’t let him be another Mal.”

“Don’t worry, pet, I’m sane enough for all of us,” Eames says dryly, and it sounds oddly like a commitment. It draws a little smirk from her, the corner of her mouth turning up ever so slightly.

“That’s a sobering thought.” They lapse into silence, the sun’s golden face rising over the buildings promising another warm day.


End file.
